I think it is generally possible to track down anyone you're dealing with if you put in a bit of effort. The problem is, when I had a fraud issue, I tracked the person down in Romania! Ok, so now what the hell do I do? Grumble and move on...
Congress could of course set more restrictive limits to patents on things like this if they choose. Remember, the constitution merely gives congress the right to make laws concerning the arts. So, if they want to cap royalties or something, they could. Assuming you could get people to vote for it....its interesting that despite all the talk from some members of congress about drug companies charging too much, not giving poor nations AIDS medecine etc. that no one has tried to just legislate that they cant...
Well, I only had about 24 hours of outage on 2 occasions, which is ok. But its everything else thats irritating. I made the mistake of installing their software. It branded my PC with their logo all over, changed my bookmarks, changed my browser settings. It installed spyware for their tech support people (which maybe I would have tolerated if it had said it would do that). They changed my email with very little notice to something that has 8 digits and a state name in it. I feel like an AOler now with my email address being something like hotNhorny72734792734MI. They raised the price $5. They no longer offer a usenet server, so I'm reduced to telnetting in to a university server and using tin (google doesn't carry the group I want). I had a number of other minor issues, and sent two tech support emails. About 2 weeks later I received a note telling me tech support would not be responding due to them getting a whole lot of emails from people. You used to get 5 free hours of dialup for remote access, thats gone too.
A^2 nearly revoked Mediaone's charter since they sucked so bad, but gave comcast a free pass when they bought them because they promised to be better. They aren't better, they're worse. I still have cable modem service, which is what I really need. But lets face it, these intangibles really do matter. And its sad that there is no option for most consumers. I would have to rewire the house for DSL and satellite is a joke. This is why we need all cable providers to have access to all networks. Only then will competition keep these people honest.
After the chaos that Comcast has caused by switching from Mediaone's network (who they bought out, at least in this area) to theirs, my city (Ann Arbor Michigan) has begun to consider regulating them as if they were an essential utility like electric or phone. They seem to understand that this would be something that may never have been attempted before, and could be tough considering the FCC does regulation of them.
But, when the franchise for cable was given to Comcast, they had made all these promises that they would be a lot better than mediaone, provide better customer service, better actual service, etc, etc. Instead, it has been a disaster in terms of service, they've reduced the features you get with your service, and increased the price.
Frankly it would be nice for the city to be able to dictate certain reasonable conditions. And this would be negotiated when their contract expires in about a year. Here is an article.
A few months back I received 4 of these cards in the mail telling me that my business could comply within X days without penalty, blah blah blah.
Only problem: I have no business, I'm a random college student. So, to summarize, they sent sent three duplicates of the nasty-gram, and to someone who isn't a business owner. I wouldn't worry about them being on to you if you get one of these...
It is not a large operation, with an annual budget of less than $2 million, 15 employees and dozens of volunteers and interns, supported by 5,000 members.
I'm hardly in a financial position to do so, but this has finally convinced me to join the EFF. With all the old cases, plus everything new the USA PATRIOT act put into place, they need all the help they can get....
From what I've read they have spent nearly 80 billion dollars over the past 20 year studying this site, and the GAO still says they haven't answered the questions of safety. It seems to me that they figure they've got to do something, and if they can't figure out what with 80 billion and 20 years of study they might as well just go ahead with whatever seems to be the best option. Never underestimate the patheticness of our government
no one is being tried for murder here. All regular rules of evidence, etc. will apply. This just makes it easier and cheaper for the legal process to function. Quote the article:
The court won't have a jury and will handle only business disputes involving at least $25,000. Cases could be removed to the circuit court, and decisions could be appealed to the state Court of Appeals.
In other words, it is for business litigation only, and if any party doesn't want to use the cyber court they can file a motion and move to a regular court.
This seems similar to small claims court....special rules to make things easy in a narrow but common set of circumstances. And if one party isn't satisfied with the way the special court works, they can move to a regular court.
I worked once on linking together 11 years of a SINGLE database. Each year the exact roster of columns was a bit different, and the possible values would change slightly. Merging all of these into a single database was very difficult.
The challenges in combining 50 states databases, all in different formats, containing different information, stored in different formats, etc. will be a very difficult and time intensive challenge.
And, I wonder if they will even be able to get many states to give up their databses?
If I go a block down to Borders to buy a CD, and I discover that there is no option but to buy one that doesn't work correctly in my computer, or that I can't burn it to an MP3 CD (and thus have several CDs in one), then I'm either not going to buy it or return it. Then, I'll get on Morpheus and download the whole damn CD.
This is really what it has come down to. the RIAA is forcing consumers to choose between piracy or a product that is of limited or no use. And I choose piracy.
This was supposedly a production product, that apparantly worked. I mean, if they sold it to the police I'm guessing that if the cameras had picked up a face that they were looking for it would have some reasonable chance of identifying it. I hope no one started selling seats on an airliners before they tested to see if the plane could fly.
Well, the problem is that you should be able to go about your life withou the police scanning you at every moment you show your face in public. Yes, its public, but I sort of like the hands-off policy of policiing the US. And, our crime is really very low in most places so it hasn't caused any problems to do it this way.
Also, the ACLU found that they identified a total of zero (0) criminals in Tampa with this system, so its also a waste of money....
I'm a CS major at the University of Michigan, and I've only taken 1 programming course, and I don't think I'll be taking another. In my particular degree there is a lot of math. Three calc courses, probability (based on calc, so you have to have taken all calcs first), two discrete math courses (one based on the other plus a bunch of basic CS courses). If you want CE instead of CS there is even more math, plus required physics and maybe chemestry. Other classes are on algorithm analysis, and deep background stuff like circuit design, processor design, and the basic level mechanics of databases, networks, etc. Many of these are electives, but the point is you're not likely to have the level of knowledge required from experience alone even if you have read books on the subject.
Then there are distribution courses. For CS you need about 80 credits of other stuff, compared to around 40 for your concentration. It breaks down like this: 7 credits each of social science, humanities, natural science, plus 3 more credits in three of these categories: natural science, humanities, social science, math, creative expressing. You must have 4th semester proficiency in a foreign language. You have to take two writing classes, one involving several substantial papers. And there are several other requirements.
Point is, I think it is tough. You don't seem to have much respect for degrees since you're doing well without one, so this kind of program probably isn't a good option. I would just look for a really shitty school that will do anything to get students. It may be worthless, but a degree from a crappy school doesn't matter once you've proved yourself with experience.
Not having a degree will become a big problem though, so maybe you should just take a few years off and enjoy yourself in college. At my internship this summer the company had a guy who didn't have a degree who had been working as a contract employee for 14 years. He was making substantially less in salary and had much much worse benefits. It is nearly impossible to hire non-degree tech people at many companies, and you may want to apply to one of those companies someday. So just think this: Drinking and girls. Take 4 years off and do it right (can do three years if you go for 2 summer sessions, maybe less 2.5 if you take heavy courseloads).
I don't see how it matters if he was malicious. It seems he's been convicted, but is not going to be serving a long sentance in jail, so maybe he should feel lucky. I was an intern at Ford this summer, and I'm sure if I decided to demostrate to them that they should hire me by cracking the passwords of executives I would have been arrested and charged with a crime.
Probably I'll grumble and gripe about things for a while, change the settings back that can be easily changed, and then ignore the registry issues.
Reading about the spyware that the person from Charter had installed has got me thinking that I need to get a firewall again. I used to have blackICE, but then I got a router which pretty much took care of things. Now I don't use the router, so I should get a firewall again, I think....to protect from hackers, and from my own ISP. Sigh, another good service is going to hell....
First, they had to change my email address to the new domain that they're using on comcast's network. So they took my old user name, added my 6 digit account number and my state abbreviation. So I feel like I'm an aol user now. Maybe they should have just named me "teenMforF028734927".
Next, they send a CD with all kinds of ominous warnings about how if I didn't run it by a certain date to install their new software, my access would be interrupted. I wasn't sure what software was necessary, since I currently use no special software, but I decided to go ahead anyway. Big mistake. It tried to update my email account to my new aol-luser account name and update the mail servers. But, I have both Outlook and outlook express (No comments that I should just use linux, I use multiple OSes, including windows thanks). So it didn't bother to ask, added the account to outlook express, even though I use outlook for mail.
Next, it completely fucked my browser over. It added a ton of bookmarks, it added a ton of links, and it changed my homepage to comcast's website. That was easy enough to reverse, but then it pulled an X10 on me: The little spinny icon that is animated when a page is loading was changed to comcast's logo. And they added "provided by comcast" to the name of the program that goes on the titlebar. I am dreading having to figure out which registry keys I will need to edit to change that back. At least it didn't change the icons for any file types like X10 does.
But overall I'm pissed. I can handle having my email address change, and having to change service. But did they really think that those email addresses were acceptable? A lot of people are going to want them changed (which is probably why their phone has been busy for 3 solid days). The rest will deal with it, but be pissed nonetheless. And I most certainely did not ask for them to fuck with my programs and settings. There is nothing more enraging than to have a program change your customized settings on things without so much as asking.
And did I mention the new support tool they isntalled? When I complained about my email address I discovered that it was sending all kinds of info to them about my system. Now this makes sense to help diagnose problems, but it was sending configurations, what programs were running, system info, and about a half dozen other categories of stuff. This is extremely intrusive and it is only vaguely alluded to.
When I got my cable modem, all they did was get my ethernet card's MAC address, plug in the cable modem, and active that MAC address at their headquarters. Now they think they have free access to my computer. I'm not pleased, but as usual there is no alternative for me to comcast.
Its not as crazy as it sounds. If you're a business owner, do you really want to cause mass chaos to switch people to a new OS? This means that pretty much every application has to be realearned. Productivity will drop like a rock. And unless you're a power user like a developer, who is likely to use some kind of unix anyway (most likely sun or linux), word and excel and windows probably serve your needs nicely.
Thats the main barrier for business acceptance of Linux. Why should they have a new learning curve when that costs money, and they've already got a workforce that is used to products that are adequate for the tasks that need to be done?
Well, comcast uses @home, here is the AUP. It doesn't say no VPN, it does say no servers. It says that it is not to be used for commercial purposes. It in no way applies to checking office email from home.
The Intellectual property statement is this: "Through these actions, a user also authorizes Excite@Home and its distribution affiliates to reproduce, publish, display, transmit and distribute such content as necessary for @Home to deliver the content in a timely manner."
The actions they're referring to is posting content in the personal web space they provide. Obviously they need to transmit, etc. the content in order for people to view it on the web. They are not claiming ownership of anything that passes through their network.
No business can satisfy people who look at a regular AUP and see it in the most twisted and evil way possible.
well I've seen a lot of talk about lions and rabbits and stuff. Australia also has big problems with pigs and some frogs, according to the Crocodile Hunter.
But! A game reserve for ENDANGERED species might be ok, because that would be things like rhinos and giraffes and primates. There's a reason that they're all endangered, and part of it is because humans can kick the ass of any natural population with ease (compared to rabbits, which breed like rabbits, and thus are not endangered).
So for these species it would be less risky. On the other hand, a reserve in Africa would be ideal, and it is possible to have a reserve without major problems from poachers if the location is right.
In addition to the comments pointing out that recertified means new, refurbished also usually means that someone returned an open box. Meaning, refurbished items are usually new too.
I have never had a problem with a refurbished item, and I think its likely that most others haven't either.
Well, this is good in that when the unfair WIPO panels rule unfairly, it can be contested further.
However, this also means that if they happen to make a good decision in favor of the little guy, a big company can then tie it up in court and cost them millions in legal fees.
Hopefully, anything that gets taken to a real court will be decided quickly, because the situation is usually pretty simple and the courts should be able to affirm or reverse a decision without too much heavy thinking.
Its not an abuse of power. The law says that teachers cannot strike, and this has surely been upheld by the courts since lots of states have that law. The teachers are striking, and were ordered by the judge to comply with the law and return to class. Since they refused, they were arrested.
This is what happens when you disobey a lawful order from a judge. Now, the teachers may still be doing the right thing, but if you want to practice civil disobedience, you might end up in the clink.
Judges do not have the luxury of ignoring the law, or just saying "oh well" when people fail to follow their lawful orders. Again, this isn't flamebait...teachers may be doing the right thing by standing up for themselves, but the judge is also doing the right thing in enforcing the law.
How is an author morally entitled to royalties 50 years after the author is dead and buried in the ground?
A major problem here is that you're not distinguishing between really old books, and brand newly published ones. So, where is the cutoff line where its ok to redistribute someone's copyright?
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I think it is generally possible to track down anyone you're dealing with if you put in a bit of effort. The problem is, when I had a fraud issue, I tracked the person down in Romania! Ok, so now what the hell do I do? Grumble and move on...
Congress could of course set more restrictive limits to patents on things like this if they choose. Remember, the constitution merely gives congress the right to make laws concerning the arts. So, if they want to cap royalties or something, they could. Assuming you could get people to vote for it....its interesting that despite all the talk from some members of congress about drug companies charging too much, not giving poor nations AIDS medecine etc. that no one has tried to just legislate that they cant...
When I used to use Oracle it was unbreakable. The only people who had complete access was the DBA and some guy named Scott Tiger....
A^2 nearly revoked Mediaone's charter since they sucked so bad, but gave comcast a free pass when they bought them because they promised to be better. They aren't better, they're worse. I still have cable modem service, which is what I really need. But lets face it, these intangibles really do matter. And its sad that there is no option for most consumers. I would have to rewire the house for DSL and satellite is a joke. This is why we need all cable providers to have access to all networks. Only then will competition keep these people honest.
But, when the franchise for cable was given to Comcast, they had made all these promises that they would be a lot better than mediaone, provide better customer service, better actual service, etc, etc. Instead, it has been a disaster in terms of service, they've reduced the features you get with your service, and increased the price.
Frankly it would be nice for the city to be able to dictate certain reasonable conditions. And this would be negotiated when their contract expires in about a year. Here is an article.
Only problem: I have no business, I'm a random college student. So, to summarize, they sent sent three duplicates of the nasty-gram, and to someone who isn't a business owner. I wouldn't worry about them being on to you if you get one of these...
I'm hardly in a financial position to do so, but this has finally convinced me to join the EFF. With all the old cases, plus everything new the USA PATRIOT act put into place, they need all the help they can get....
Please consider doing so as well.
Have I just been living in a fog??? I pay $35 a month for basic cable....it comes with 82 channels, so its not like its lacking something important.
From what I've read they have spent nearly 80 billion dollars over the past 20 year studying this site, and the GAO still says they haven't answered the questions of safety. It seems to me that they figure they've got to do something, and if they can't figure out what with 80 billion and 20 years of study they might as well just go ahead with whatever seems to be the best option. Never underestimate the patheticness of our government
The court won't have a jury and will handle only business disputes involving at least $25,000. Cases could be removed to the circuit court, and decisions could be appealed to the state Court of Appeals.
In other words, it is for business litigation only, and if any party doesn't want to use the cyber court they can file a motion and move to a regular court.
This seems similar to small claims court....special rules to make things easy in a narrow but common set of circumstances. And if one party isn't satisfied with the way the special court works, they can move to a regular court.
The challenges in combining 50 states databases, all in different formats, containing different information, stored in different formats, etc. will be a very difficult and time intensive challenge.
And, I wonder if they will even be able to get many states to give up their databses?
This is really what it has come down to. the RIAA is forcing consumers to choose between piracy or a product that is of limited or no use. And I choose piracy.
This was supposedly a production product, that apparantly worked. I mean, if they sold it to the police I'm guessing that if the cameras had picked up a face that they were looking for it would have some reasonable chance of identifying it. I hope no one started selling seats on an airliners before they tested to see if the plane could fly.
Also, the ACLU found that they identified a total of zero (0) criminals in Tampa with this system, so its also a waste of money....
Then there are distribution courses. For CS you need about 80 credits of other stuff, compared to around 40 for your concentration. It breaks down like this: 7 credits each of social science, humanities, natural science, plus 3 more credits in three of these categories: natural science, humanities, social science, math, creative expressing. You must have 4th semester proficiency in a foreign language. You have to take two writing classes, one involving several substantial papers. And there are several other requirements.
Point is, I think it is tough. You don't seem to have much respect for degrees since you're doing well without one, so this kind of program probably isn't a good option. I would just look for a really shitty school that will do anything to get students. It may be worthless, but a degree from a crappy school doesn't matter once you've proved yourself with experience.
Not having a degree will become a big problem though, so maybe you should just take a few years off and enjoy yourself in college. At my internship this summer the company had a guy who didn't have a degree who had been working as a contract employee for 14 years. He was making substantially less in salary and had much much worse benefits. It is nearly impossible to hire non-degree tech people at many companies, and you may want to apply to one of those companies someday. So just think this: Drinking and girls. Take 4 years off and do it right (can do three years if you go for 2 summer sessions, maybe less 2.5 if you take heavy courseloads).
This case ended exactly as it should have
Reading about the spyware that the person from Charter had installed has got me thinking that I need to get a firewall again. I used to have blackICE, but then I got a router which pretty much took care of things. Now I don't use the router, so I should get a firewall again, I think....to protect from hackers, and from my own ISP. Sigh, another good service is going to hell....
Next, they send a CD with all kinds of ominous warnings about how if I didn't run it by a certain date to install their new software, my access would be interrupted. I wasn't sure what software was necessary, since I currently use no special software, but I decided to go ahead anyway. Big mistake. It tried to update my email account to my new aol-luser account name and update the mail servers. But, I have both Outlook and outlook express (No comments that I should just use linux, I use multiple OSes, including windows thanks). So it didn't bother to ask, added the account to outlook express, even though I use outlook for mail.
Next, it completely fucked my browser over. It added a ton of bookmarks, it added a ton of links, and it changed my homepage to comcast's website. That was easy enough to reverse, but then it pulled an X10 on me: The little spinny icon that is animated when a page is loading was changed to comcast's logo. And they added "provided by comcast" to the name of the program that goes on the titlebar. I am dreading having to figure out which registry keys I will need to edit to change that back. At least it didn't change the icons for any file types like X10 does.
But overall I'm pissed. I can handle having my email address change, and having to change service. But did they really think that those email addresses were acceptable? A lot of people are going to want them changed (which is probably why their phone has been busy for 3 solid days). The rest will deal with it, but be pissed nonetheless. And I most certainely did not ask for them to fuck with my programs and settings. There is nothing more enraging than to have a program change your customized settings on things without so much as asking.
And did I mention the new support tool they isntalled? When I complained about my email address I discovered that it was sending all kinds of info to them about my system. Now this makes sense to help diagnose problems, but it was sending configurations, what programs were running, system info, and about a half dozen other categories of stuff. This is extremely intrusive and it is only vaguely alluded to.
When I got my cable modem, all they did was get my ethernet card's MAC address, plug in the cable modem, and active that MAC address at their headquarters. Now they think they have free access to my computer. I'm not pleased, but as usual there is no alternative for me to comcast.
Thats the main barrier for business acceptance of Linux. Why should they have a new learning curve when that costs money, and they've already got a workforce that is used to products that are adequate for the tasks that need to be done?
The Intellectual property statement is this: "Through these actions, a user also authorizes Excite@Home and its distribution affiliates to reproduce, publish, display, transmit and distribute such content as necessary for @Home to deliver the content in a timely manner."
The actions they're referring to is posting content in the personal web space they provide. Obviously they need to transmit, etc. the content in order for people to view it on the web. They are not claiming ownership of anything that passes through their network.
No business can satisfy people who look at a regular AUP and see it in the most twisted and evil way possible.
But! A game reserve for ENDANGERED species might be ok, because that would be things like rhinos and giraffes and primates. There's a reason that they're all endangered, and part of it is because humans can kick the ass of any natural population with ease (compared to rabbits, which breed like rabbits, and thus are not endangered).
So for these species it would be less risky. On the other hand, a reserve in Africa would be ideal, and it is possible to have a reserve without major problems from poachers if the location is right.
I have never had a problem with a refurbished item, and I think its likely that most others haven't either.
However, this also means that if they happen to make a good decision in favor of the little guy, a big company can then tie it up in court and cost them millions in legal fees.
Hopefully, anything that gets taken to a real court will be decided quickly, because the situation is usually pretty simple and the courts should be able to affirm or reverse a decision without too much heavy thinking.
This is what happens when you disobey a lawful order from a judge. Now, the teachers may still be doing the right thing, but if you want to practice civil disobedience, you might end up in the clink.
Judges do not have the luxury of ignoring the law, or just saying "oh well" when people fail to follow their lawful orders. Again, this isn't flamebait...teachers may be doing the right thing by standing up for themselves, but the judge is also doing the right thing in enforcing the law.
A major problem here is that you're not distinguishing between really old books, and brand newly published ones. So, where is the cutoff line where its ok to redistribute someone's copyright?